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Venice Tourist Ships Rattle Windows and Nerves

A massive cruise ship arriving in Venice recently. Residents are questioning the environmental impact of such big ships.Credit
Manuel Silvestri/Reuters

VENICE — When cruise ships and ferries stream their way down the Giudecca Canal to dock at Venice’s main passenger terminal, the windowpanes on some of the palazzos on the quay have been known to tremble. Sometimes, even the walls shake.

“Oh, we feel them, even if they go very slowly,” said Rossella Vianello, who works at the University of Venice’s linguistics department, which is in a palazzo facing the canal. The windows shake at their passing, she said, “although it used to be worse before the university replaced the old glass with double panes.”

Beyond wobbly windows, a growing number of Venetians are beginning to question the impact that these mastodon-like liners are having on this chronically fragile city.

Last year, 619 passenger ships and 581 ferries made pit stops here — a de rigueur destination on many Mediterranean cruise itineraries — unloading more than two million visitors onto Venetian streets, usually for short stays. Most of the ships follow the same route to the passenger terminal, through the Bocca di Lido, the northern access to the lagoon, and then along Venice’s fish-shaped belly past St. Mark’s Basin and down the Giudecca Canal.

Local concerns are manifold, including questions about the pollution — water, noise and air — created by the giant ships, the impact on the lagoon’s ecosystem, and the potential erosion of the marble of Venice’s buildings and their underwater foundations.

“We can no longer put up with something that affects the health and well-being of the city. We must stop pretending that nothing is going on,” said Saverio Pastor, a local artisan of gondola parts, and a leader in the anti-liner protest movement, which held a news conference here last week.

“There’s the question of visibility,” he added.

For instance, the Olympia Palace, a Minoan Lines ferryboat that bobbed down the canal on Wednesday, is about 700 feet long and about 50 feet above the water (with another 24 feet below). “It’s like a condominium of 5,000 people passing through an extremely delicate environment,” Mr. Pastor said.

Port officials have repeatedly assured the citizens’ groups that the western edge of Venice is constantly monitored for the air quality and ship emissions, as well as noise pollution and other potential side effects on the lagoon and its historic buildings. But critics suspect that they are not being told the whole truth.

Port surveys do indicate that the waves created by the transit of the ships “don’t cause any damage to buildings, and that pollution levels are within the norm, but citizens perceive something else altogether,” said Michela Scibilia, the president of 40xVenezia, a residents’ organization.

“Otherwise, 400 people wouldn’t have joined our Facebook group” in less than a week, she said. What the city needs, she said, “is more open debate.”

Some residents living in the area closest to the harbor, near the Santa Marta boat stop, the closest to the passenger terminal, maintain that when the cruise and ferry boats pass, their TV sets go on the blink because of electromagnetic interference from the ships.

But like it or not, tourism fuels Venice’s economy.

“Everyone in Venice works with the cruise passengers, from taxis to bars to suppliers; it is one great big turnover,” said Antonio Murer, the proprietor of El Chioschetto in Venice, a bar on the Giudecca Canal. Mr. Murer used to live just next to his bar, and he recalled the shaky foundations and clinking glass. “But the ships bring people, and cruises can save a season.”

Still, residents are concerned with how quickly the phenomenon has grown. In 1999, fewer than 100,000 people visited Venice as part of a cruise, while last year nearly 1.6 million did. Today Venice and Barcelona vie for first place in the Mediterranean home port rankings.

“Some days you can have as many as 10 ships coming in; it just isn’t safe,” said Manuel Vecchina, another ship critic. And the tourists from the ships, who do not stay long, do not make a significant impact on Venice’s economy. “And even if they did spend millions, is it worth the risk of destroying the city?” he asked.

At the end of April, several groups sent a letter to the Port Authority and Venetian and national officials asking for the ships to be banned in St. Mark’s Basin. They are waiting for a response. “We are amply under every limit of the law, and if we are, it’s because we’ve made an effort to be,” said Paolo Costa, the president of Venice Port Authority, who dismissed the criticisms during a telephone interview. “We have the best cruise terminal in the Mediterranean for efficiency and sustainability.”

Work is under way on a new terminal for ferry traffic at Fusina, on the mainland, next to the Porto Marghera industrial area. When it opens in 2013, the passenger ferries (and the thousands of cars they carry) will be detoured there, using a route through the lagoon that is now used mostly by cargo traffic. The port authority is also carrying out measures to improve environmental sustainability and better handle increases in traffic.

“We are facing a bottomless demand for cruises to Venice,” Mr. Costa said. “To the few thousand protesters I say that millions of visitors come by cruise, and many more millions would like to come.”

Many tourists swear by the cruise experience. “We wouldn’t have come had it not been for the cruise,” Rick Confer, a financial consultant from Minnesota, said at the start of a 10-day cruise around Italy. “People want to see culture and beauty, and cruise ships allow that.”

Tell that to Severino R. Rigo, an information technology engineer who represents a committee of residents who live in Venice’s Castello neighborhood. Mr. Rigo is angry because so many large ships are permitted to dock off the Riva dei Sette Martiri, a quay near St. Mark’s Square, bringing noise pollution and creating vibrations that he believes are dangerous for palazzo foundations. “It’s fine to have tourists, but they have to be managed,” he said. “And then no one would park a semitrailer in Piazza Navona,” Rome’s baroque square.

A version of this article appears in print on May 15, 2011, on page A16 of the New York edition with the headline: Venice Tourist Ships Rattle Windows and Nerves. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe